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Petal Pushing: Is Lancôme's New Face Cream the Bloom of Youth?

The time I tend to feel most religious is either (a) during terrible turbulence on a flight or (b) at about the time a new baby needs christening. Likewise, as far as anti-aging potions go, I have so far been an atheist. I mean, until recently, I was reasonably young. I didn’t believe in anti-wrinkle creams, because I didn’t really have any wrinkles. Anyway, suddenly I seem to be 42-and-a-quarter years old, and I have a serious frown line and creases under the eyes. My belief systems are officially under review.

When I heard that Lancôme had a jar of face cream in Paris containing two million stem cells cultivated from a special rose that grows in its own field in the Loire Valley, that they had spent more than a decade developing it, that it was the most costly moisturizer they have ever produced, and that those cells really could rejuvenate the skin—well, I was open to conversion.

My first stop in Paris was the office of Youcef Nabi, who runs Lancôme and dresses head to toe in chic black. There was a vast bunch of hot-pink roses perched on the coffee table. This rose, which I could smell from a yard away, was the official Lancôme Rose, created in 1973 by Georges Delbard, France’s most important rose cultivator. This particular flower (which required the crossbreeding of 2,000 species) was originally grown for the express purpose of creating perfumes, but as a result of its resilience, the house’s scientists began studying its cells, too—isolating one in its leaf—from which they created Absolue L’Extrait, the new cream in question.

Silently, Nabi handed me a large black box as though it were a sacred object. It opened to reveal a heavy black glass jar with a golden top, squatting like a Buddha in a gilded interior. I rubbed a little of the ballet-pink cream on my hand. It had a delicate scent of roses, not too sweet, and seemed to disperse on my skin like water.

The rose’s stem cells, which serve to regenerate cells in the plant, had been found to have a similar effect on human dermal cells: stimulating fibroblasts to produce more collagen and elastin. Pro-Xylaine, a patented protein found in beech trees, which helps defend the skin against water loss, had also been added to the mix.

Nabi showed me pages of graphs and figures demonstrating the exponential increase in “skin luminosity” following eleven weeks use of L’Extrait. “We talk about glow, about skin quality,” Nabi continued, adding that Lancôme no longer uses the term anti-aging, as it is too reminiscent of the word aging. Of the $350 price tag, “true luxury is efficacy,” said Nabi. “L’Extrait changes a woman’s life much more than a bag or a shoe. This gives you confidence. So it’s worth it.”

The next morning, I went to the Lancôme Institute on Faubourg Saint-Honoré for the two-hour Absolue L’Extrait Facial. The Lancôme Institute is a nirvana-like space, full of white treatment rooms, white leather couches, and piles and piles of white towels. My facialist, Karolina, who looked exactly like Grace Kelly, explained that this particular facial would make L’Extrait penetrate my skin more deeply than I could possibly imagine.

Karolina escorted me to a heated, padded chair and washed my feet (a facial in Paris is like a facial nowhere else). She examined my skin and declared it dangerously “dehydrated” but upon pinching my chin decided the texture was “Firm! Good!” She used an enormous “massage petal”—one side made of black plastic, and the other of solid metal, which was ice-cold—to relax and tighten my face as she smoothed on the cream.

I spent a dreamy two hours in Ka-rolina’s boiling-hot chair, listening to peculiar music that had been specially composed to mimic the life of a rose (I told you a facial in Paris is an extraordinary thing). At the end, Karolina produced a mirror and showed me my face. “Look!” she gasped. “This cream is a miracle.” She said this as though she were relating the Feeding of the 5,000. Afterward, I was sent downstairs to the gleaming boutique to have my makeup done. I left looking as though I had had a marvelous night’s sleep, and ready for a dash into Vanessa Bruno on the Rue de Castiglione.

I’ve used the cream on my face for six weeks now, and I can report:1. No breakouts. Frown line still present but somehow softer.2. Skin glowing like a baby’s.3. Comments from grimacing friends about how “well” I look, which is actually middle-aged-mom code for “Why do you look so annoyingly young?”4. I’m still not sure about religion, but I do believe in anti-wrinkle creams.